• ^ 



B7 



NASCENT STAGES AND THEIR PEDAGOGICAL 
SIGNIFICANCE. 



By E. B. Bryan. 



Introduction. 

The general aims of education may be classed under two 
heads : (a) Those that emphasize the individual. (;^) Those 
that emphasize society. There are those who hold that if all 
the latent powers of the child, mental, moral, and physical are 
developed fully and symmetrically with entire emphasis upon 
him as an individual, we not only get the best individual product 
possible in a given case but the best social product as well. On 
the other hand there are those who hold that inasmuch as the 
child isi born of society, is a member of society, and is becom- 
ing more and more a potent member of society, his training 
should be given him with a view to the needs of society rather 
than to his individual needs, believing that thereby not only is 
the best social product assured but also that the best has been 
done for the individual as such. 

There is truth in both these thoughts, and when they are 
reduced to their lowest terms, we have simply a question of 
relative emphasis of two fundamental factors in the aim of edu- 
cation. But whichever phase is emphasized, this surely is true, 
that any attempt at curriculum making or educational proced- 
ure which does not take into account the laws and stages of 
the development of the one to be taught, is apt to go wide of 
the mark and induce arrested development either by holding 
the child to work which belongs to a lower stage of develop- 
ment or by rushing him on precociously to work which pre- 
sumes a development which he has not yet attained. 

Therefore, from whatever standpoint we view the aim and 
problem of education, a knowledge of the stages in the devel- 
opment of people, of the abrupt turns and the deep places in 
the stream of human life, of the nascent periods, so to speak, 
of human development is of prime importance. 

In educational literature many hints of the importance of 
such knowledge are found, and much of the work done in schools 
and colleges is purported to be based upon such knowledge; 
and yet, with the exception of the periods of pubescence and 
adolescence, it must be admitted, I think, that our information 



2 NASCENT STAGES. 

has been very vague and limited and that the ground on which 
we have stood has for most part been only a feeling, variable as 
individuals are variable, that such and such things are true. 

In general literature, the thought that human life is not an 
unbroken continuum but rather moves in great beats or stages 
is quite pronounced and dates back to very ancient times. 

An historical study of religious ceremonies performed at cer- 
tain ages shows how deeply the idea has worked itself into the 
religious consciousness. A. brief but careful study of the con- 
temporary religious consciousness has revealed the same thing, 
and the special studies upon conversion, backsliding and other 
religious phenomena bring out the same results. 

The change of seasons, the succession of crops, special days 
for special things, all emphasize the thought that there are cer- 
tain times that are peculiarly fitted for certain things. 

The old faculty psychology dividing the mind, as it does, not 
only into intellect, sensibility, and will, but also into the chron- 
ological apartments of perception, memory, imagination, judg- 
ment, reason, etc., while largely the result of speculation, is 
doubtless to a degree both the result of this folk-consciousness 
and also a potent cause for the tenacity with which the educa- 
tional world at large clings to the idea of successive stages in 
development. 

Teachers and students have experienced that some things 
come comparatively eas}' in early years and other things in later 
years, and consciously or unconsciously arrive at the conclusion 
that there should be an adaptation of the kind and amount of 
work to the stage of development; i. e., that certain times are 
ripe times for certain things. 

A limited number of experiments upon animals, together 
with every day observations, tend very strongly to confirm this 
thought. The results of Spalding's (35)* work with the chick 
re-enforce the thought and James (20, Vol. II, p. 398) brings 
out the same thing in his chapter on Instinct. 

Returns from two thousand teachers emphasize ver}^ strongly 
the fact that if children at certain times have a longing for, or 
show an aptitude in Drawing, Music, Manual Training, Ath- 
letics, etc., but are deprived of the opportunity for culture along 
these lines, the}^ are apt to lose their interest or aptitude or both. 

It is thought that children who become blind before a certain 
age are not apt to have visual images, while those who become 
blind after that age are apt to have visual images. The same 
thing is supposed to be true of the other senses, notabl> the 
sense of hearing. 

♦The figures in parentheses refer to similar numbers in Authorities 
Cited at end of the article. 



NASCENT STAGES. 3 

Donaldson (14, p. 37) sa3^s : " Development and the changes 
involved in growing old, are by no means synonomous, so that 
although in those animals with a fixed size there are always to 
be found undeveloped cells, yet it is not a correct inference that 
these cells are also young in the sense that they might still com- 
plete their development. It appears, rather, that the capacity 
for undergoing expansive change is transient, and that those 
cells which fail to react during the proper growing period of an 
animal have lost their opportunity forever. ' ' 

The studies that Barnes (3) has made of children's interests 
show that the things in which children are apt to have a lively 
interest vary with age. 

All of these things point to the possibility of more or less 
definite stages or nascent periods in development, and the pur- 
pose of this paper is to collect and formulate the evidence for 
such a theory in its application to human development, and to 
make pedagogical deductions from this evidence. 

Hartwell (17) divides the first twenty-five years of life into 
four stages (i) Infancy from birth till the first dentition. (2) 
Childhood, from the first to the second dentition at seven or 
eigh^ years of age. (3) Boyhood or Girlhood, from second 
dentition to puberty at thirteen or fourteen years of age. (4) 
Puberty and Adolescence, from thirteen to the beginning of the 
twenty-fifth year. 

Ivange (23) has four stages, (i) From birth to two years, 
highest rate of growth. (2) From two to twelve years, decreas- 
ing annual increments. (3) Twelve to fifteen years, mental 
growth. (4) Fifteen to twenty-one years, a sudden decrease 
in annual increments. 

Zeissing (7, p. 255) found three stages, (i) One of de- 
crease in the yearly increments of growth up to nine years. 

(2) Increase of yearly increments to the seventeenth year. (3) 
A later decrease. 

_ Vierordt (7, p. 325) has seven stages, (i) From birth to 
eight months. (2) From eight months to seven or eight years. 

(3) From seven or eight years to fourteen years. (4) From 
fourteen or fifteen to t;venty-one or twenty -two. And then 
early adult, later adult age to the sixtieth year, and old age. 
Clouston (11) divides the years of development into three 
stages, (i) From birth to seven. (2) From seven to thirteen. 
(3) From thirteen to twenty-five. 

That there are varying rates of growth in the development 
of a child has been established beyond question. There is the 
seasonal rhythm now slow now fast, there is the variation due 
to nutrition, variation due to disease, and variation due to in- 
crease of function; so that the curve of development is not a 
straight line. 



4 NASCENT STAGES. 

Also, it is pretty definitely known what an average child (if 
such a thing there be) is capable of at a given age. (We know, 
for example, that it does not walk and talk at six months but 
that it does at thirty-six.) 

Special studies upon individual children have made much 
more definite the general notions of the unscientific but sympa- 
thetic observer of children. So that we have a vast amount of 
unorganized data for the work scattered here and there covering 
the entire developmental period. It is no part of the purpose 
of this stud}^ therefore, to redemonstrate that the curve of life 
is a broken and not a straight line or even to make a contribu- 
tion of new data. It is rather a work of organization and inter- 
pretation of facts worked out by various observations, researches 
and experiments with a view of finding what truth and signifi- 
cance there may be in the theory of nascent periods; what these 
nascent periods are in themselves; and what relation they bear 
to one another. For a convenient resume of the many theories 
concerning the periods of childhood the reader is referred to 
Dr. Chamberlain's book on The Child (8a pp. 51-105). 

The hope of fixing hard and fast limits for each or any of 
these stages is not entertained; the limits will vary with indi- 
viduals as everything else does. But it is the hope to show on 
physiological and psychological grounds that in the develop- 
ment of the child there is a series of periods each more or less 
homogeneous in itself, but widely different from all the others, 
that each period serves as a propaedeutic to the one that follows 
and that each is preceded by a relatively short transitional pe- 
riod characterized by mental and physical disturbances which 
serve as the time for rearrangement and preparation for the 
stage which is to follow. I wish then, in the light of what is 
found to be true of these periods, to make deductions of some 
the more obvious pedagogical principles. 

I. 

Infancy. 

Following the months of pre-natal existence, comes birth 
with the first days of life's experience. Psychically, there 
come rolling in upon the child floods of sensations, meaning- 
less in most part and of no present value to him. "All its 
senses," says Perez (27, p. 8)," are battered by repeated shocks 
of strange impressions, and it's wailing cries indicate how pain- 
fully these are felt." I think it questionable, however, whether 
the cries are due so much to the feeling of pain or whether they 
are merely reflexive. Clouston (12) I think, comes nearer 
the truth than Perez when he says that, " At birth a child is 
absolutely destitute of mental faculty. The thing does not ex. 



NASCKNT STAGES. 5 

ist. All competent observers agree on this point; and all newly- 
born children are equally mindless. There is no exception. 
But why does the child cry, and seem to feel pain, and move, 
and feed himself? Those at first are all automatic, or reflex 
actions unaccompanied by mind, the apparatus for performing 
which in the brain and spinal cord, is almost perfect at this time, 
while the mental apparatus is undeveloped. He breathes, too, 
as well as ever he will do, just because the group of nerve cells 
in the brain that produces and regulates the breathing move- 
ments is perfect at birth." 

To quote the much used expression of Prof. James (20, 
p. 16) "The object which the numerous inpouring currents 
of the body bring to his consciousness is one big, blooming, 
buzzing confusion. That confusion is the baby's universe." 

Physically, during the first week of life, the child looks like 
itself no two days in succession; it readjusts itself to the new 
environment; it breathes, it takes food through the mouth, 
every sense is appealed to by outer stimuli, a change in move- 
ment is possible, and the child becomes less plump and loses in 
weight. Perez (27, p. 10) says: "Up to the third day there 
iS a diminution of between three and four ounces in their weight, 
and it is not till the sixth or seventh day that they get back 
to what they were at birth." 

Bayard Holmes, M. D., (19) sa5's: "During the first three 
or four days after birth there is a normal loss of weight of be- 
tween 6.15 and 6.96 per cent. The average loss of weight is 222 
grammes. This is followed by a rapid increase in weight, 
which is greatest during the second month." 

It seems, therefore, that the first few days of the child's life 
are not a continuance of the pre-natal development, but serve 
rather as a transitional period, characterized by various psy- 
chical and physical disturbances, of readustment, and prep- 
aration for the stage which is to follow. 

For some months following these earliest days, if the child 
be normal, there is a gradual development — not a development 
due so much to its reactions upon outer stimuli, but rather an 
unfolding of its life, the child remaining for most part passive 
in its relations to the outer world, being receptive rather than 
expressive. 

By way of food, clothing, etc. , it takes what is given it, its 
only means of expressing its disapproval being more or less 
unintelligible mimetic gesticulations and crying. During the 
first months it cannot balance its head; it cannot sit, nor stand; 
it cannot roll over, creep, walk, run, jump, or climb; it cannot 
talk; it cannot eat. Its ability as an aggressor is nil. Never- 
theless its power to react, to express itself both mentally and 
physically, is increasing so that at the end of the third or fourth 



6 NASCENT STAGES. 

mouth it can balance its head; in a few more months it can sit 
alone, can roll over, and is beginning to creep; and in most 
cases, by the end of the first year, the child is creeping as well 
as it ever will; it is beginning to stand, is trying to walk, and 
climbs whenever an opportunity is afforded. 

It is no longer unable to see as at birth but has its senses of 
sight and hearing developed, so that on the one hand by the 
time it attains its first year, its visual accommodation is per- 
fect ; it looks away at objects and has pleasure in seeing peo- 
ple and things. On the other hand, its sense of hearing 
develops from the fourth day when it is able to hear a sharp 
noise, until at the close of the first year, it not only hears a 
noise at a distance but adjusts its head to catch the sound. 
(28 for fuller discussion.) 

During this time the senses of touch, taste and smell have 
kept pace with the sense of hearing and sight, so that from the 
physical standpoint, the child is freeing itself from its passive 
condition at the time of birth and is becoming more and more 
capable of an active life. In language, which has both psy- 
chical and physical factors, the child during the first year or 
year and a half, has made sufiicient start to make his most 
common wants known ; it distorts its words in many ways, is 
incapable of speaking in sentences, and finds it necessary to 
supplement and to re-enforce its oral language with all kinds 
of gesticulations which are as unskillful as the language itself. 
It has reached that stage where it is " beginning to talk." 

We have no evidence that in the first months of a child's 
life it does constructive mental work ; it does not plan and 
project, it does not arrange means for the accomplishment of 
preconceived ends ; its mental life is not one of expression. 
It has sentiments of taste, fears and anger, animal and human 
sympathies, and often shows signs of afiection ; it frequently 
manifests presence of will ; it is capable of slight attention ; 
and it can imagine, remember, and associate. Perez thinks 
that very young children are capable of elaborating ideas in 
the form of judgment, abstraction, comparison, generalization, 
etc. However this may be, it is evident that they are not 
capable of consecutive thought and are not constructively 
effective. To use the words of Dr, Lukens (25), " Beginning 
with the period of almost pure receptivity and open-mouthed 
wonder and delight in the senses, the child very soon, how- 
ever, begins to react and, as Froebel says, to make the internal 
external. In most children, for instance, there is a more or 
less clearly marked period lasting from a few weeks to several 
months, during which they understand nearly or quite all that 
is said to them but have not themselves begun yet to speak." 

In the Neuroses of Development, Clouston (II, p. 8) says : 



NASCENT STAGES. 



"Sensation, common and special, come next soon after birth, 
and we have reason to believe that its peripheral, receptive ap- 
paratus and brain centers rapidly acquire perfection, though its 
future mental interpretation is a gradual and slow process. 
Most of the motor processes are more gradual in coming to 
perfection, and, indeed, cannot be said to have arrived to that 
stage till adolescence is nearly completed." 

One may safely say, then, that during these first months(i2 
or i8) the sensory side of the child has developed much more 
rapidly than the motor side. It has been appealed to in a 
thousand ways ; it has been awakened, but for most part it has 
been a recipient in a telling way, but not an effective actor. 
Its chief business has been to grow and not to act. This is 
shown by the fact that at the end of the first year the child 
should be three times as heavy as at birth and half as heavy 
as it will be at seven years of age (30). Its increase in 
height the first year will never be equalled in any succeeding 
year. The increase in brain weight should be five times as 
great (381 grammes, 945 grammes) as for any succeeding 
year. 

On an average, the growth of the brain the first year is 
equal to more than one-third the entire weight at maturity 
(37)-, 

It is important in this connection to know that out of every 
one thousand children under one year of age, two hundred 
twenty, or 22 per cent., die annually. " When we realize that 
the mortality from typhoid fever is less than ten per cent, of 
the individuals afifected, and that the mortality during the first 
year of childhood is over 20 per cent. , and therefore, infer that 
it is just twice as dangerous to be an infant under one year 
of age as to have typhoid fever, some idea of the delicacy of 
the individual at this period of life may be obtained." (10.) 

The child's chief business, then, is to keep alive and grow. 

The pedagogic question is, what are the best things that can 
come into the life of the child during these earliest months ? 
Inasmuch as growing is its chief function, all the conditions 
for normal growth should be observed and all the causes of 
arrested development averted. 

There should be no crowding ; there should be little re- 
straint and all undue excitement should be avoided, lest the 
delicate nervous system be irremediably shocked. One of the 
prime conditions of normal growth is a sufficient amount of 
wholesome food, but at this stage the variety of food should not 
be great if indeed it should not be limited to the one kind 
which nature has expressly provided. The child is unable to 
properly prepare solids for digestion and they should be kept 
from it until it is provided with teeth and proper strength to 



8 nasce;nt stages. 

use them effectivel}^ ; and until the alimentary processes are 
confirmed. Another condition of normal growth is a sufficient 
amount and proper kind of clothing ; many babies are 
smothered out of their wits and frozen out of their growth. 
Cleanliness, sunshine, and an abundant supply of fresh air are 
prime requisites. It is known to every one that diseases and 
traumatisms interfere with the growth of the child and often 
cause permanent arrest of development ; a judicious amount 
of care should be exercised to prevent disaster from such 
causes. Only such things as are conducive to the child's 
good health should be observed during these first months. 

Its development, always in pulse beats, should, however, 
in the first months have no abrupt turns but should be a con- 
tinuous wave line — a rather steady and uniform movement. 
This is the stage of infancy. 

II. 

Transition from Infancy to Childhood. 

Then comes at a 5'ear or a year and a half of age (the time 
varies greatly with individuals) another transitional period of 
disturbance and readjustment. The child creeps or walks ; 
it gesticulates or talks ; it is having its second summer ; its 
temporary teeth are coming ; it is taking new food ; it is pas- 
sing from the stage of gastro-enteric diseases to the stage of 
infectious diseases ; there is great change in its anatomical 
proportions. It is breaking away from the quiet receptive 
stage of the infant and is becoming aggressive, as is shown in 
its impulse toward migration so well brought out by Kline 
(22), so that when the transition is finallj^ made, it no longer 
waits and passively receives what is brought to it, but goes 
after what it wants. It can climb and walk and run ; it no 
longer waits until its mother bare her breast to gratify its 
hunger, but eats many things and has teeth with which to eat; 
it no longer makes known it's wants by grunts and vague ges- 
ticulations, but uses language for this purpose. 

' ' From birth when the brain weighs about fourteen ounces 
up to two years when it has attained twice and a half that 
weight, there has been a series of new evolutions or creations 
of new faculties. After that there takes place a gradual per- 
fecting of those faculties (12)." 

" During the first two years of life, says Dr. Christopher (10), 
the child, as a rule, possesses a considerable deposit of adipose 
tissue. As he passes the second year of life and enters the 
third there is considerable change in his anatomical propor- 
tions. He grows in height and loses rotundity and plumpness, 
and passes quite rapidly from a period recognized as that of 



NASCENT STAGES. 9 

childhood. From then on the dangers to the life of the indi- 
vidual from factors in direct relation with its growth and devel- 
opment are not so great as before. Then comes the period of 
infectious diseases." 

Thus, the child has moved out of the purel}^ receptive stage 
of the infant, through a period of disturbance, into the active 
stage of childhood at about the close of the second year. 

In Miss Shinn's observations (33, p. 411), the child's first successful 
attempt at creeping was at the age of nine months; at standing, the 
close of the ninth month; at climbing, eleven months; at walking, 
twelve months; at running, the close of the fourteenth month. 

In Prof. Preyer's observations, the child's first successful attempt at 
creeping was at the thirteenth mouth ; at standing, the close of the 
ninth month ; at walking, the sixteenth month ; at running, the six- 
teenth month. 

In Mrs. Hall's observations, the child's first successful attempt at 
creeping was at the age of thirteen months ; at standing, twelve months ; 
at walking, fourteen months. 

In Mrs. Beatty's observations, the first successful attempt at creep- 
ing was at the age of nine months ; at standing, eleven months ; at 
climbing, twelve months ; at walking, fourteen months ; at running, 
sixteen months. 

In Miss Shinn's observations, the habit of creeping was complete at 
thfe age of ten months ; of standing, twelve mouths ; of climbing, at 
the close of the eleventh month : of walking, thirteen months ; of run- 
tiing, fifteen months. 

In Prof. Preyer's observations, the habit of creeping was complete 
at the age of fourteen months; of standing, at seventeen months; of 
walking, at eighteen months. 

In Mrs. Hall's observations, the habit of creeping was complete at 
the age of fourteen months ; of standing, at fourteen months ; of walk- 
ing, at sixteen months. 

In Mrs. Beatty's observations, the habit of creeping was complete 
in the tenth month ; of standing, at sixteen months ; of walking, six- 
teen months ; of running, at nineteen months or later. 

III. 

Childhood. 

The development of the child from this time up to the sev- 
enth or eighth year, while not precisely the same during any 
succession of months or years, will be marked by no decided 
turns. The annual increase in height and weight will not vary 
greatl)'^, but there will be a steady growth in both these direc- 
tions, very much less rapid than in the first year, and less rapid 
than during the years that immediately follow this stage. The 
child is becoming more and more active, but owing to a lack 
of development of the peripheral muscles and the nerves that 
control them, his movements are unco-ordinated so that he is 
not effective as a producer, and activity is its own excuse for 
being. 

Special sense education and the development of language con- 



lO NASCENT STAGES. 

tinue at a rapid rate; the brain grows rapidly and approximates 
its full weight at the age of seven or eight. The sensory side 
is still in advance of the motor, but the child is by no means 
receptive only. His activity resulting in no outer product of 
value, finds its immediate value in itself, and so this is the 
stage of play. His keen sensory side catches up ever)'- sugges- 
tion, so that this is pre-eminently the stage of suggestion and 
imitation. 

He gets most of his information first hand through the senses; 
further than this his mental life is made up chiefly of repro- 
duced images and crude products of the imagination, although 
he is capable of carrying on many of the higher mental pro- 
cesses in a simple fashion. 

Unless spoiled, the child at this age knows no such thing as 
shame, or modesty; it is apt to be selfish and fond of teasing and 
bullying as has been so well shown by Burk (6). His notions 
of right and wrong are not clearly defined and are very vacil- 
lating. Any hint of a moral code that he may possess, is not 
of his own making but has been impressed upon him from with- 
out through suggestion rather than by precept. 

As in the former stage, growth was the prime desideratum, 
so here it is the thing of chief importance; not so much a quiet 
unfolding of the latent powers of the child as in the first stage, 
but rather a development through activity. But it must not 
be forgotten that the benefit derived here from the activity 
of the child is to be found in the child and not in the thing he 
does. 

' ' During the period of brain growth in bulk up to the seventh 
year, when the full size and weight are almost attained, nutri- 
tive influences are of the largest value. How far this can 
reach positively, needs future demonstration, but is rich in 
promise; how far negatively, is well understood, but receives 
as yet insufl&cient support. There are during these early days 
more formative power and less output of energy exhibited." 
(36.) 

All of the essentials for normal growth in the first stage 
should be diligently observed here as well. Nutrition, cleanli- 
ness, sunshine, fresh air, and care to prevent arrested develop- 
ment from diseases and traumatisms. But in addition to these 
things, there arises here the pedagogic problem of positive 
training, physical and mental. 

The first question, of course, is this: Should the child re- 
ceive any systematic training during this stage, or should we 
simply observe the foregoing conditions for growth and keep 
hands off? 

This much can be said in regard to this question, — biology 
and psychology tell us that what one can do at any given time 



NASCENT STAGES. II 

depends more or less upon what he has been doing; i. e., the 
life of one stage is determined by the life preceding this stage. 
From about two up to seven or eight the child is acting and 
reacting. He is giving himself his first kinks and turns. _ He 
is laying out the lines for his future automatisms and driving 
the stakes. His style of sitting, walking, speaking, throwing, 
etc. , his style of reaction to authority, his style of social reaction, 
are all becoming defined and taking set during these plastic 
years. The lines are being laid for the child or against it 
whether it will or not. Enough care and systematic training, 
and no more, should be given during this stage as will assure 
the best approach in all of these lines to the years that are to 
follow. (The essentials for such guidance are sensible sympathy 
and a rare fund of insight and self control). 

Where we do not know, the watchword should be ' ' hands 
off. ' ' But the most common-place teacher or parent does know 
that if a child sits ' ' humped up ' ' the first years of its life the 
chances are that it will never sit erect; if it is allowed to fly 
into a fury and scream and tear its hair during these years, the 
tendency later on will be to do something worse; if it does every- 
thing in a slouchy, careless, half-finished way, with great difl&- 
culty will it ever learn to do them in any other way. If 
it is allowed to lie and steal with impunity, it will develop 
into a thorough-going liar and thief. Concerning these and 
similar things the child should not be allowed to develop at ran- 
dom. Who knows more, can do more; who knows less, should 
most assuredly do less. In a word, then, our motto for this 
stage should not be "hands ofi"" but rather this: a better 
knowledge of child life, and greater sympathy with it, so that 
we may be able to know how and when to lay hands on. 

I^et us notice a second question — If the child is to receive 
more or less systematic training at this time, what should it be? 

It has already been observed that during this stage the child's 
keen sensory side catches up every suggestion, so that on the 
one hand this is the stage of suggestion and imitation. This 
is one of the keys to the solution of the problem. Another 
key is to be found, I think, in the fact that this is pre-eminently 
the play stage. We have here a hint at both matter and method, 
(i) The greater part of the child's activity and, indeed, all of 
it at the beginning of this stage, should be play and not work. 
(2) Work should be only introduced gradually in proportion 
as the child develops in mental and physical control. (3) The 
child should not be held for a perfect piece of objective work. 

In regard to method, but two things can be said with any 
degree of definiteness. (i) Suggestion should play an impor- 
tant role. (2) The spontaneity of the child should have full 
freedom. 



12 NASCENT STAGES. 

This gives us a basis for the discussion of these two practical 
questions: a. What things may be taught the child at this 
time? b. How should they be taught? 

It would require many volumes to discuss the merits and 
demerits of the entire catalogue of subjects, so the purpose 
here will be merely to touch upon enough things to bring out 
the thought and illustrate the principle. 

lyct us make the application to the child's play, work, and 
conduct. 

Play. If play is to serve its highest end, it must be play in 
the highest sense spontaneous for most part, free from outer 
direction and careless of ends. Play under close supervision is 
a self-contradiction — it not only defeats the ends of play but 
ceases to be play. Parents and teachers need to remember that 
to require children to play according to prescribed formulae 
means to have them quit play and go to work, and at the same 
time robs them of all the benefit of the initiative; and that 
thereby the main avenue of approach to the child's life is closed. 
It is a matter of common observation that to know a child, or 
any one else for that matter, he must be free to live his own 
life. This free living of the child is his play. It is commendable 
in parents to join in the plays with their children, but if they 
do so they must do so for most part at the suggestion of 
the child, and play the part the child would have them play 
in a way he would have them play it. Kindergartners and 
teachers in elementary schools would do well to observe 
the same thing. To call work play, doesn't make it play, 
and any performance planned and closely supervised by 
the teacher, however attractive it may be in itself, realizes 
less in play results than in work results. This suggests the 
amount of freedom and spontaneity that should characterize the 
school plays of this early stage whether within or without the 
school room. If the kindergarten emphasizes play as an ele- 
ment in its curriculum, it must not be tardy in recognizing 
what are the essential elements of play. Furthermore, Sheldon 
(32) and Gulick (16) have shown that during these years chil- 
dren do not take kindly to organized play or so-called team 
work, and when inveigled into it are very unsuccessful. It 
must not be forgotten that during these years, the accessory 
muscles are not under good control, that movements are unco- 
ordinated, that the child is not effective as a producer, and that 
activity finds its own immediate value in itself. Co-operation 
is essentially a work factor and not a play factor; and, this being 
pre-eminently the play stage, the child is not successful in co- 
operative games. Ample opportunity for unorganized, unham- 
pered, spontaneous activity on the part of every child should be 
the play ideal of every kindergarten and elementary school. 



NASCENT STAGES. 1 3 

Work. In considering the work appropriate to this stage, 
some things need to be restated as a basis for discussion. First, 
that the end of work is a definite product — physical or mental. 
Second, that this is the stage of imitation and suggestion par 
excellence. Third, that the accessory muscles are not under 
good control. Fourth, that the child's mental life is made up 
chiefly of percepts, reproduced images, and crude products of 
the imagination. 

Taking them up in the order named, the child should be re- 
quired to do only those things for which it has a fair degree of 
efficiency, otherwise, the end for which work is intended is de- 
feated and through the force of habit a positive injury may 
come to the child. But those things for which he does have a 
fair degree of capability, he should be required to do. For, if 
it be true that at this time all work and no play makes Jack a 
dull boy, it is also true that all play and no work makes Jack 
a mere toy. The principle is equally applicable in the fields of 
mental and physical work. 

In making pedagogical deductions from the second point, 
viz., this is pre-eminently the stage of suggestion and imitation, 
it need only be said in passing that both common observation 
and psychological reasearch have shown that this is true. ( i : 
2: 15: 18: 34.) 

What the child gets through suggestion at this stage amounts 
to infinitely more in every way than what he gets in the form 
of precepts. To illustrate, — Neither formal grammar nor 
even language lessons are necessary to insure good usage on 
the part of the child that has lived among people who speak 
correctly; and no amount of both will insure correct usage 
on the part of the child that is not so situated. A year's 
change of residence served to alter in every way the pronun- 
ciation of two children aged three and six whose parents were 
entirely unaffected. Such cases could be multiplied indefi- 
nitely. In fact, suggestion and imitation are the basis for the 
development of language both in the race and the individual, 
and should be the chief and, aside from incidental correction, 
the only means of helping the child in his language at this 
time. lyCt the child hear correct usage and as soon as he is 
able to read let him have access to a variety of well written 
story books, and he will be helped infinitely more than by 
any amount of formal instruction. The latter method of help- 
ing the child not only fails in its purpose but even does pos- 
itive harm inasmuch as it prematurely brings him to a con- 
sciousness of his own mistakes and of errors of which he would 
otherwise happily remain entirely ignorant. The language 
ideal at this time is saturation in good forms. Let the eye and 
especially the ear feast upon good language but never make the 



14 NASCENT STAGES. 

child acutely conscious of the fact that this is good and some- 
thing else is bad. An acute consciousness of good usage is 
only second in harmfulness to an acute consciousness of bad 
usage. This is the ripe age to give the child a start in the foreign 
languages providing he is so situated that he may apply both 
eye and ear to the work. If those with whom he associates 
use the foreign language, and if the literature at his disposal 
is written in this language, almost as easily will he at this time 
learn this language as he did his mother tongue. But, if he 
hears the mother tongue only or mostly, and the foreign lan- 
guage in the class-room onh^ it would perhaps be better to 
defer the work till a later stage. (See p. 389.) 

In the second and third points we have ground for determin- 
ing the nature of the manual work suitable for this stage. 

Since President Hall's first lectures upon the subject some 
3^ears ago, and the publication of Burk's work ('96) on the 
development of the nervous system from fundamental to access- 
ory, many kindergartners have verj^ wisely discarded work which 
requires fine movement and delicate adjustment such as fine 
needle work, work upon delicately perforated cardboards, lay- 
ing of small sticks, etc., and have harmonized their require- 
ments in writing more with the facts of modern physiology and 
psychology, by making greater use of the board and allowing 
children to do this work on a larger and freer scale in every 
way. The efiect upon drawing has been equally wholesome 
and this, together with the facts brought out by lyukens and 
Barnes, gives a pretty safe basis for determining the work in this 
subject at this stage. The researches of Ross (31, p. 83), 
Bryan (5) and Burk (8) indicate that from the standpoint of 
physiolog)' and psychology, the work in drawing at this time 
should be just what Lukens (24) and Barnes (3) have found it 
to be when the child is unhampered and left perfectly free to 
express himself. The former have shown that there is but little 
peripheral control at this time but with proper practice control 
may be developed rapidly toward the close of this stage at seven 
or eight years of age, while the latter have shown that the 
earliest drawings of the child are apt to be mere scribbles. 
The former have shown that the child is incapable of fine move- 
ments and delicate adjustments, but can easily make larger 
movements, and the latter have shown that after the scribble 
stage the child naturally draws with a few large telling lines 
making the drawing quite simple. I/Ukens agrees with Barnes 
in his thought that this is the time for the alphabets of drawing 
but that the technique or grammar of the subject should be de- 
ferred till a later time, say about the ninth year, and Mr. Henry 
T. Bailey, in the Massachusetts Report of the Board of Educa- 
tion, ('94- '95) says that " if the power to draw is not acquired 



NASCENT STAGES. 1 5 

before the end of the ninth year, it is not acquired in the public 
schools." (29.) 

Inasmuch as the purpose of this paper is to set out in relief 
the stages in child development with some of the more obvious 
pedagogical deductions only, the subject of drawing as such 
cannot be discussed fully — merely some of the primal facts 
that will serve as guides in working out the details. As the 
ideal at this stage on the side of physiology and psychology 
should be not so much a definite product but rather a bridging 
over from the unorganized, uncontrolled movements at the 
beginning of this stage to a higer degree of mental and physical 
co-ordination and control at its close, so at this time the ideal in 
drawing should be not so much one who can draw, but rather 
a movement away from scribble to plain definite lines whose 
combinations have more or less meaning. (Great care should 
be taken to avoid arrest of development either from crowding, 
retardation, or reversion.) Inasmuch as suggestion plays so 
important a role at this time, "interest in drawing should be 
early developed by giving children access to an abundance of 
good pictures, illustrated books, magazines and plates of great 
m^n, great scenes; and great sculptures, paintings and edifices. 
These helps are of the utmost importance in all art education, 
and should be in the environment of the child from the begin- 
ning. Drawing thus becomes a pleasure to children, and they 
acquire considerable skill without any instruction." (24.) 

The general principles in a rational course in Drawing would 
serve equally well in other lines of manual work. Local con- 
ditions will be a determining factor in the technique of all of this 
work, but not in the principles underlying it. And, in all of 
the manual work up to seven or eight years of age, the spon- 
taneity of the child should be allowed to assert itself. In many 
cases other forms than drawing will be taken up. Instead of 
drawing many children take to paper cutting first, and follow 
this with drawing. I have seen the pictures of animals, cut by 
a boy seven years of age, so true to life that even the mental 
mood of the animal could easily be detected. Although the 
pictures in themselves were plain, the conception and execution 
were that of a potential artist. This work for him was, above 
all things else a mode of expression, just as speaking, writing 
or drawing are for other children. It was followed by coloring 
and writing with unusually rapid progress in both. It is diflS- 
cult to guess what the results would have been if this child at 
the age of four or five had been required to conform to a cut- 
and-dry course of manual work. But we can not take what this 
child did so well as evidence that all children of his age should 
do a certain amount of paper cutting. The valuable pedagogical 
suggestion that it contains is that children should be supplied 



1 6 NASCENT STAGES. 

in the home and in the school with a variety of materials and 
have an opportunity to express themselves with perfect free- 
dom. 

If the development of the race and child have any pedagogical 
significance, this is evidently the ripe time for the beginning of 
the study of nature. We are not, neither shall we be, free from 
the need of and interest in the three fundamental human needs, 
viz., food, clothing, and shelter. The poet and philosopher can 
not prosper on rhyme and speculation alone. They, as well as 
the scientist and laborer, must have life before they have their 
own peculiar lives; they, too, must be fed, clothed and sheltered. 
We have here a center in which the interests of all humanity 
converge. The poorest and most ignorant have little more, and 
the most favored have nothing that can be substituted for them. 
The need for biologic knowledge was the first and continues to 
be the primary need of life. To know in some way which 
things are for us and which against us, which will cure and which 
will kill, in short to know the life with which and in which we 
live is our primary need. This is not only true chronologically, 
but logically and biologically as well. There is no escape from 
it. If there is any truth in the "recapitulation theory," and 
if the natural, spontaneous interest of the child is to be a deter- 
mining factor in the selection of material for the kindergarten 
and elementary school, it would seem to be a gross error to omit 
those things which have been the earliest and most persistent 
elements in the development of the race and in which the child 
finds its greatest delight. 

It would be outside the scope of this paper to discuss the 
standpoints, sources, and methods in Nature Study, sufiice it 
to say that the most prevailing standpoints are what are known 
as the (i) Mytho-poetic, (2) Human value relation, (3) Ethi- 
cal value, (4) Esthetic value, (5) Intellectual value. None of 
these is all-comprehensive and, indeed, it may be that all of 
them are not, but each will serve as an organizing idea for the 
work. A pedagogical question which arises is, which should come 
first, second, etc.? The interest of the child must determine this 
very largely. Perhaps, for young children, better and more 
varied results could be gotten from the Mytho-poetic standpoint. 
Perhaps, for the adolescent, the standpoint of Ethical values 
could be used most effectively. We see here how intricately 
related are all the problems and phases of pedagogy. To plan 
a course in Nature Study one not only needs to know nature 
as it is to-day, but also the cultural stages through which the 
race has passed and above all he needs to be a student of chil- 
dren. Whoever tries to solve this or any other pedagogical 
problem from the standpoint of some little phase of work in 
which he may have particular interest is more apt to go wrong 



NASCENT STAGES. 1 7 

than right. The great text book of nature is open before us. 
In this, both the race and the child find their most primary 
and fundamental needs supplied, and their first and most abid- 
ing interest awakened. In the kindergarten and elementary 
school, when practicable, the care and culture of animals and 
plants should be the first aim ; where this is not practicable, 
association and acquaintance with them should be encouraged. 
This study should constitute the very core and heart of elemen- 
tar}^ education and should be secondary to no other phase of 
work. 

This is also the time to use Myth and Narrative History. 
For the child the world is shrouded in mystery and peopled 
with strange and unheard of beings. The mysterious appeals 
strongly to all, but especially to the child whose experience is 
limited and to whom the world is largely a mystery. Although 
his curiosity for meaning is intense, the world cannot be inter- 
preted to him scientifically or philosophically. Myth offers 
a splendid opportunit}'^ for introducing him to many of the 
forces and passions, hopes and fears, victories and defeats that 
have made his world what it is. It should be taught as the 
counferpart of Nature study, the one introducing the child to 
life as it is found in plants and animals and the other introduc- 
ing him to human life and spirit. Following close upon Myth 
or carried along with it, should come Narrative History — not 
the history grind but the historical story. Children have great 
delight in change, in movement, in events. This is especially 
true where the agents are human or where they are conceived 
as possessing or being ruled by spirit akin to human spirit. 
The child is not interested in the intricately complex principles 
and processes of modern society, but its interest in the simple 
and more tangible beginnings is absorbing. Any phase ot 
history that can be subjected to the form of the simple narra- 
tive story is most excellent pabulum for the child at this 
time. 

There remain to be discussed the subjects of Reading, Writ- 
ing, and Arithmetic (the three R's) for children before their 
seventh or eighth year. To make more firm the ground on 
which deductions in regard to these subjects are to be based, 
let us notice some additional things that are true of the child 
and his development during this stage. In his address on 
Movement and Psychic Processes, Mosso (26) says : "In man 
the brain develops later than in all other animals, because his 
muscles also develop later. The striped muscles are more in- 
complete at birth in man than in any other animal. For this 
fact that the human brain develops so slowly, I am able to 
discover no other reason than this, that at birth the organs 
which effect movement over which the brain exercises its 



1 8 NASCENT STAGES. 

authority, are not yet complete. Modern views show a ten- 
dency to confirm what the great philosophers of Greece 
already recognized, viz., that children ought to begin to read 
and write only with the tenth year ; that it is injurious for 
the development of the brain to be fettered to the school-desk 
when only five or six years old. Attention produces not only 
the same chemical effects and the same fatigue as muscular 
exertion does, but we feel also, when we are attentive to any 
thing, the characteristic muscular strain on the occiput, the 
forehead, and other parts of the body. The more mobile the 
extremities of an animal are, the more intelligent it is. • 

" The mutual relation of intelligence and movement is one of 
the most constant factors in nature, the movements always 
change where intelligence changes. Microcephalic individuals 
have an awkward gait, and an inconsiderable dexterity in the 
movement of the hands. This change is still more striking 
in the case of idiots. When the brain has been fatigued by 
exclusively intellectual activity, the sensitiveness of the hand 
and direct irritability of the muscles are also decreased. The 
influence of the hand upon the development of a language is 
evident from the fact that an aphasic patient is made to write 
in order that he may gradually regain the power of speech. 
The relation between muscular movements and conscious pro- 
cesses is so intimate that when the arms and hands of a hyp- 
notized person are brought into certain positions, and certain 
muscles by external contact made to contract, certain emotions 
are induced corresponding to those muscular contractions. ' ' 

But, as has already been noted, Ross, Bryan and Burk have 
shown that before seven or eight years of age, the child is to a 
high degree inaffective as a motor being. The work of Lukens 
and Barnes on Drawing as well as common observation by 
every one, re-enforces the thought. If there is then this close 
parallelism between movement on the one hand and psychic 
processes on the other, as is claimed by Mosso, it must follow 
that inasmuch as movements are spontaneous, unco-ordinated, 
and but slightly under the voluntary control of the child, so 
will its thoughts likewise be spontaneous, flitting and illogi- 
cal; and this is exactly what we find in every-day observa- 
tion. Dr. Vulpius has studied the fibers which horizontally 
traverse the surface of the hemispheres, which he calls the 
tangential fibers. These appear on the outer layer of the cor- 
tex in the fifth month of life; in the seventh month the tangen- 
tial fibers can be found in the deep layers; while in the layer 
between, the cross fibers only appear after a year. In the 
child of eight, and even perhaps of seven years, the fibers of 
the cortex and medullary substances are complete in number 
and caliber, and have taken the same arrangement as in the 



NASCENT STAGES. I9 

adult. It is during the development of the brain and nervous 
system before birth and during these first years of growth, 
that malnutrition and perverted action occur, which result in 
defective mental power. ' ' The point in this that needs to be 
emphasized here is the close relation between nervous nutrition 
and mental power. Neurologists and students of children's 
diseases all agree that up to seven or eight years of age is the 
period that brings out the effects of bad heredity due to the 
rapid rate of growth and instability of the organism. If, as 
Hurd says, in the process of education, energy designed to 
further the growth of the brain is dissipated in functional 
activity, hereditar)^ tendencies to disease become thereby devel- 
oped, or the development of the brain is limited and defects 
become evident which under more favorable circumstances 
would not have existed. 

To summarize the foregoing, we have (i) a close relation 
between movement and intelligence. (2) The child's move- 
ments are unco-ordinated and spontaneous. (3) Therefore, 
the child's mental life at this time is apt to be spontaneous, 
flitting, and illogical. (4) The brain is developing primarily 
in grewth and not in function. (5) We should, therefore, 
expect a very simple kind of mental life. (6) The necessity 
for brain nutrition and not brain functioning to bridge over the 
period when hereditary tendencies to disease are most apt to be 
developed. If these things are true a question for pedagogy to 
answer is, are reading, arithmetic and writing as daily assigned 
tasks, conducive to the best development and highest welfare 
of the child ? Is the amount of information and so-called disci- 
pline derived from their study by children under eight years of 
age worth the cost ? A comparison of the outlay with the in- 
come, compels the conclusion that they are not worth the cost. 
My reason for so answering is that work in these subjects flies 
directly into the face of the foregoing facts of child life and de- 
velopment during this stage. First let us notice reading in the 
light of the summarized statement of facts. 

Perhaps no one who reads this will remember his own pecu- 
liar psychology when he learned to read his mother tongue, 
but most will remember how it was in learning a foreign lan- 
guage. Students of the French and German language find at 
first if they are very careful about their pronunciation they are 
apt to go over a page without extracting the thought, on the 
other hand they find that if they are anxious about the thought, 
their pronunciation is bad. Young men and women find it 
very difiicult to get both faultless form aud meaning until they 
have spent many years upon the language. And, yet. we re- 
quire of the child with his simple undeveloped unco-ordinated, 
physical and mental life to perform an even more difficult task. 



20 NASCENT STAGES. 

Is there any one who does not remember what a fearfully difii- 
cult thing it was even to keep the place ? But this is only one 
element in the child's difficulty; he must hold his book up, 
hold it open, keep the place, and by close attention and delicate 
adjustment of the eyes, he must decipher the characters in 
themselves and keep them related to each other and then we 
expect him to get the meaning and read with the spirit and 
understanding. The performance of such a task is not only 
injurious but in most cases impossible, and its requirement 
positively cruel. Such work should not be a fixed daily task 
of the child until there is a fair degree of muscular co-ordination 
and control, and mental strength commensurate to such physi- 
cal development, and until the period for the cropping out of 
weak hereditary tendencies due to instability of organization 
and rapid growth is passed over, which would be at about the 
age of nine or ten. For essentially the same reasons work in 
arithmetic and penmanship should be taken up, if at all, only 
incidentally during this early stage. 

Aside from the purely concrete number work. Arithmetic is 
sufficient!}' abstract and general to demand at least a fair degree 
of brain functioning and the ability to direct attention and to 
carry on in a simple way at least the processes of abstraction, 
association, and generalization. There is nothing in the physi- 
ology or psychology of development that indicates that the 
average child of seven or eight is capable of these things. By 
constant appeals to the child, together with scolding and threat- 
ening, a few arithmetical facts may be literally hammered into 
its head, but no one would ever guess that he could do anything 
worth while with these facts outside of the school room; on the 
contrary, every one who has given the matter even passing atten- 
tion knows that he cannot. If the child should give all the time 
and energy that are worse than wasted on Arithmetic, to sensi- 
ble work in Nature Study, Myth, and Narrative History, for 
which he has both an interest and ability, the world would be 
revealed to him in innumerable ways, learning would not be a 
drudgery and a bore, time would be found for the introduction 
of many kinds of work that have a real significance and value 
for him, and even more effective arithmetical knowledge and 
ability would be gained incidentally in connection with the sub- 
jects of vital interest and importance than are gained by the 
humdrum, formal study of the dry-as-dust arithmetic. 

Reading and arithmetic should not be taught as formal sub- 
jects until the close of the transitional period which closes out 
the stage of childhood at about the age of nine or ten. The old 
conservatism which keeps us doing things simply because we 
have been doing them must be broken away from whenever 
there is ground for so doing, and especially when it is plain that 



NASCENT STAGES. 21 

there is a better thing to do. When reading and arithmetic 
constituted almost the entire curriculum, child life and its devel- 
opment were not the criterion. Social rather than physiological 
and psychological facts were the determining factors. Professor 
Dewey (13) has well said that " The primary school grew prac- 
tically out of the popular movement of the sixteenth century 
when along with the invention of printing and the growth of 
commerce it became a business necessity to know how to read, 
write and figure. The aim was distinctly a practical one; it was 
utility; getting command of the.se tools, the s3^mbols of learning, 
not for the sake of learning, but because it gave access to careers 
in life otherwise closed." Neither should the social aspect of 
education to-day be ignored in the planning of school work, but 
it should not be emphasized to the hurt of the child. As was 
stated in the introduction, any attempt at curriculum making 
or educational procedure which does not take into account the 
laws and stages of development of the one to be taught, is apt 
to go wide of the mark and result in positive injury. 

Co?iduct. In deducing some of the more general principles 
which underlie the conduct and moral training of the child up 
to seven years of age, we must here, as in its play and work, 
make our determinations from the standpoint of the child itself 
and not from the standpoint of the adult. Two points must be 
borne in mind, (i) Many things which would be grossly 
immoral for the adult have no moral significance whatever for 
the child. (2) The child's standard of morality, so far as he 
can be said to have a standard, does not come to him so much 
by intuition as by precept, and not so much by precept as by 
unconscious suggestion and imitation. The first point will be 
helpful in determining the content of morality for the child, 
and the second will serve as a guide in determining the method 
in moral training. Nothing could be more deadening to the 
development of the child than an attempt to make it conform 
in every way to the moral standard of the adult. Because the 
child appropriates at this age that which does not belong to it, 
it is not therefore a thief as its father would be under the 
same conditions. Because the child in the vividness of its 
imagination does not adhere strictly to the literal truth it is not 
therefore a liar. Because the child connives in every conceiv- 
able way to attain a desirable end, it is not therefore a trickster; 
and because the naked child, even at seven or eight, manifests 
no sense of shame, it is not therefore disgracefully immoral. 
From the standpoint of the adult these things would all be 
gross breaches of morality, while from the standpoint of the 
child they have but little or no moral significance. On the 
other hand there will come a time in the life of the child when 
these very things will have great moral significance, and the 



22 NASCENT STAGES. 

pedagogical question which must be met is, what can be done 
for the child at this time which will result in a sense of right 
and wrong and a disposition to do the one and avoid the other, 
but which will not result in prudishness or a precocious and 
morbid sense of moral delinquency? Prudishness and moral 
morbidness, above all things else, must be avoided during these 
years. Better no sense of morality at all, than that the child 
of six or seven should either hold himself up as a bright and 
shining example of right conduct, or that he should magnify 
his childish mistakes into cardinal and unpardonable sins. 
Such moral attitudes are by far more hopeless, even, than almost 
any overt childish misdemeanor. It is not good for the child 
to be acutely conscious either of his goodness or his badness. 
His mind for most part should be, and under normal conditions 
will be. occupied with something other than self It is in this 
connection that direct, positive, moral training at this time not 
only fails to accomplish desirable ends, but does positive harm; 
the child and his behavior are apt to be made the topic of dis- 
cussion. For this reason, in all attempts to teach morals, an 
indirect method — the reading of a story, the relating of an inci- 
dent, etc., — is superior in every way to the more direct treat- 
ment, which should be held in reserve for special cases. We 
often teach the child to discern the right from the wrong, and 
admonish him to cleave to the one and forsake the other, only 
to find that as a result of our teaching, or in spite of it, the 
second state of that child is worse than the first. As a rule, 
the discriminations that he is capable of making are not effective 
in determining the course that he will pursue. Fine discrimi- 
nations and admonitions are apt to be valuable in proportion to 
their scarcity. Nowhere in the development of the child do 
suggestion and imitation play so lasting and important a role 
as in the development of morals and conduct. As nothing helps 
the child so much in the acquisition and use of good language 
forms as saturation in good language forms, oral and written, 
so nothing will instill within him the habit of using pure rather 
than vulgar language so much as association with those who 
always use pure language. No amount of moralizing on the 
sinfulness of lying will help the child so much as living with 
people who always speak the truth; and nothing will more 
readily and effectively develop in the child a sense of personal 
and property rights than association with those who are careful 
to observe the rights of their fellows, and who do not appropri- 
ate to their own use that which does not belong to them. The 
first great concern of parents and teachers, who are interested in 
the morals of their children, should be their own behavior. 

The moral ideal for the stage of childhood is innocence of 
right and wrong, morally considered. Every child knows that 



NASCENT STAGES. 23 

there are some things that may be done and some that may not. 
This knowledge should come to him more as a matter of course. 
He soon learns to keep his hands out of the fire because he 
doesn't like the result of putting them into it; and so he must 
early learn to desist from many things for the same simple rea- 
son that he doesn't like the consequence; but he does not, 
neither can he look upon these things in themselves as right or 
wrong. _ I have known children to repeat the oaths of their 
elders with as little sense of guilt as if they were repeating the 
catechism, and in so doing they were not therefore immoral. 
The danger, however, is that having the language at their com- 
mand, it will be but a short step to supply the content, which 
means profanity. Something should be done to prevent such 
results. Prohibition of the use of such language, with little or 
no emphasis upon the naughtiness of it, is the most rational 
and effective remedy. And so it is with the child's conduct in 
general. The experience of the parent and teacher must count 
for something, else what is the significance of parenthood or 
control in school ? There will come a time when the child should 
be thrown upon his own responsibility — left more or less free to 
do as he desires, without let or hindrance, but not so now. 
Indeed, at the beginning of life, so far are we removed from the 
possibilities of such an ideal that implicit obedience should be 
insisted upon. Some on^ has wisely said: " If the child does 
not obey when first commanded he should be punished; but if 
the teacher even succeeds in securing obedience after he has com- 
manded many times, he, and not the child, should be punished." 

Teachers must know how demoralizing it is to keep nagging 
at children. They must also know that for many reasons there 
are some requests whose reasonableness cannot be explained to 
the child. In such cases implicit unquestioned obedience should 
be expected. The child with a healthy mind does not contem- 
plate the wickedness of one possible line of action and the good- 
ness of another possible line, and upon the basis of this discrimi- 
nation determine his act. If he be a normal child, he does desist 
from doing certain things, because he has learned that these 
are things that must not be done, and he falls into the habit of 
letting them alone. On the other hand, if he be a normal child, 
he does certain things over and over again, until his habit of 
action begins to take form; and, so, the child should pass from 
his childhood into the early years of youth with the alphabets 
of moral habits pretty firmly fixed, but in no sense a contem- 
plater of deeds. 

Summary. 

To summarize the stage of childhood briefly: 

(i) There is here, as elsewhere, a close relation between 
physical movement and mental efficiency. 



24 NASCENT STAGES. 

(2) The child's physical movements are spontaneous, unco- 
ordinated, and but slightly under voluntary control. 

(3) Its mental movements are likewise spontaneous, flitting 
and illogical. 

(4) The end of work is a definite product — physical or men- 
tal. 

(5) This is the time of rapid nervous growth and great 
nervous instability. 

(6) The brain approximates its full weight at seven or eight, 
at which time development turns more to function than to size. 

(7) The child's mental life consists chiefly of percepts, repro- 
duced images, and crude products of the imagination. 

(8) This is the time when suggestion and imitation play their 
most important role. 

(9) In general, for the child of this age, right is what he may 
do; wrong is what he may not do. He has but little notion ot 
right and wrong in themselves. 

Based upon the foregoing and their corollaries, the following 
deductions are made: 

( 1 ) The chief business of the child up to seven or eight should 
be growth; hence, nutrition in its widest sense is its greatest 
need. (2, 3, 5, above.) 

(2) The child is incapable of producing effectively, and is 
apt to be permanently injured by trying to do so (2, 3, 5, 
above), hence, he finds his chief occupation in play rather 
than in work. 

(3) The child should be required to do only those things for 
which he has a fair degree of efficiency (2, 4, 5, above), and for 
most part those things which appeal to him. 

(4) The child is helped more through suggestion and imita- 
tion than by formal instruction. (7, 8, above.) 

(5) Through suggestion and imitation his social and natural 
environment have great influence upon him. (8, above.) 

(6) The aim of training at this time should be the production 
of the healthiest child possible, and not information, (i, 2, 3, 
5, 6 above.) 

(7) Some things besides play which appeal to the child at 
this time and which give him mental vigor, and at the same 
time do not interfere with his development, are Nature Study, 
Myth, Narrative History, Paper-cutting, Free-hand Drawing, 
and Singing. 

(8) Arithmetic and reading require muscular and mental 
ability and control that the child has not yet attained, and should 
not be a part of the regular school work. (2, 3, 5, 6, 7, above.) 

(9) Nothing has so great moral effect upon the child as the 
things he sees and hears. (8, above.) 

(10) Unquestioned obedience to rational, intelligent authority 



NASCENT STAGES. 25 

should be the principle in the management of young children, 
and freedom from this principle will increase with the develop- 
ment of the child. 

In the negative discussion of reading and arithmetic for the 
stage of childhood, I have already anticipated some things 
which from the positive standpoint belong to the following 
stage. But before passing to this stage the transitional period 
which comes between these stages must be treated. 

IV. 

Transition from Chii^dhood to Youth. 

As has already been shown, the stages of infancy and child- 
hood are ushered in by short transitional periods, which are 
both retrospective and prophetic. So, in passing from the stage 
of childhood to that of youth, at about the age of eight, there 
is a marked transition which carries into it and ofttimes through 
it, many of the characteristics of the preceding stage, and at the 
same time develops new features which are peculiar to the stage 
that follows. As in the other transitional periods, so here there 
ca^ be drawn no hard and fast lines, but in general the time is 
between seven or eight years of age at the beginning and nine 
or ten at the close. Old things are passing away and new ones 
appearing. 

At about seven or eight years of age the brain has approxi- 
mated its full weight, and is changing in its development from 
increase in size to increase of function. Along with this there 
is also a change in the rate of bodily growth; so that the annual 
increase will be greater at the beginning of this stage than it 
has been through the stage of childhood. 

The child is losing its first teeth and the permanent ones are 
coming. This more objective and superficial change seen in the 
case of the teeth has many physical and mental counterparts; 
the child is not quite at its best either physically or mentally. 

Doubtless many of the disturbances of this time are due to 
bad nutrition which finds its cause in improper mastication of 
the food, the child having sometimes as many as three or four 
teeth out at a time. 

This same thing is seen in many of the domestic animals, 
notably the horse which gets his second teeth at the age of four. 
Dealers in horses for the market will not buy under five years 
of age. Their stock remark is that a horse at four is no account. 
While this is not literally true, anyone who has handled young 
horses knows that a four-year-old does not have either the en- 
durance or trustworthiness of a three-year-old. Reggner (4) 
observed that young monkeys often sickened and died of fever 
when shedding their milk teeth, and the same process is cer- 



26 NASCENT STAGES. 

tainl}^ not free from risk in the human subject. Nervous chil- 
dren often become emaciated during its progress, or suffer much 
from neuralgia or cough; and from having been hard}^ and 
robust, they become pale and delicate. Apparentlj^ in connec- 
tion with it also complaints are sometimes made of headache, 
tenderness of the eyes, and lassitude. 

At this period is encountered also that curious and sometimes 
puzzling perversion of the moral nature, known as malingering. 
From egotism and insatiable craving for notice and sympathy, 
from a desire to escape work, from jealousy, or from some more 
complex motive, the boy or girl simulates disease, and may do 
so with considerable ingenuity and success, or exaggerates some 
trifling ailment. 

The disorder is generally povert37- of the blood and nervous- 
ness, which not rarely are connected with constitutional changes 
associated with the second dentition. 

There is a change in the vascular system at this time. Krohn 
has found that the child of eight fatigues much more easily 
than the one of six or seven or the one nine years of age. 
There is apt to be dilation of the heart and cardiac incompe- 
tence, such as shortness of breath and readiness of fatigue. 
The reason for the dilated heart at this time is the sudden in- 
crease in weight of the child without corresponding increase in 
size of heart muscle. . The dilation or tendency to dilation and 
fatigue curves, represent the fact that the child must conserve 
its strength until its heart grows to its work, (9, p. 114.) 

Dr. Christopher (10, pp. 330-331) says, — "We must recog- 
nize that the period from seven to nine years of age, quite irre- 
spective of the other conditions of the life of the child, is one 
in which fatigue occurs very readily and is one in which damage 
to the heart is likely to be produced. This period in child life 
is one to which special attention should be called because of the 
extremely insidious character of its approach. It is not only 
in physical fatigue that it manifests itself, but in mental fatigue 
and in the exhibition of many nervous symptoms otherwise 
utterly unaccountable. 

One of the commonest manifestations is the appearance of 
general laziness on the part of the child, and it is extremely 
common to conclude that the child needs more exercise. As a 
matter of course it is perfectly evident that, of all things, the 
child does not need more exercise at this period, but in every 
way its force should be conserved and its labors reduced to the 
smallest possible degree consistent with the maintenance of 
health. The duration of this period lasts occasionally a few 
months, although in a number of in.stances I have known it to 
last two years and even longer, during which time the child's 
failure to develop sufl&cieut progress at school, and its manifest- 



NASCENT STAGES. 27 

ations of unpleasant nervous symptoms have been the cause of 
great anxiety on the part of parents. It is clear that the school 
work during this period of life should be diminished to a point 
below that which has been done the previous year and which 
may be undertaken safely the next year." 

The studies of Jastrow (21) indicate that at this time there is 
a transition, change or stage in the development of the special 
senses notably the sense of sight. The results of his investiga- 
tions and observations show that children who have lost their 
sight before about seven years of age (the time coincides to the 
time for the approximate weight of the brain) do not have visual 
images, and, as a rule, those who lose their sight after this time 
do have. This, perhaps, does not point so much to a change in 
the development of the organ as it does to a central change. 
However this may be, it is significant as marking a time of 
transition in the course of development, and is fraught with 
great pedagogical value not only for those who teach all classes 
of blind, but also for those who teach normally developed 
people. 

, One of the most striking changes that occur at this time is 
to be seen in the entirely different nature of the somatic dis- 
eases preceding and following this period. As has been shown, 
during the stage of infancy from two to seven, is the time for 
infectious diseases, and in his treatise on The Di.seases of Infancy 
and Childhood, Holt shows that after this time there is a tran- 
sition from the infectious diseases of childhood to the diseases 
which are more often found in adults than in children. The 
change in nervous diseases at seven or eight indicates even more 
clearly than does the change in somatic diseases that this is a 
time of transition. Before this time which Clouston (11) des- 
ignates as the period of most rapid brain growth, special sense 
education, motor co-ordinations, and speech, the prevailing 
nervous diseases are convulsions, squint, stammering, back- 
wardness of speech, night terrors, infantile paralysis, tubercular 
meningitis, hydrocephalus and rickets. ' ' Every one of these, ' ' 
he says, ' 'can be connected with the immense brain growth of the 
period, with the development of certain essential brain functions 
at this time, such as speech equilibration, and the other essen- 
tial muscular co-ordinations, with the intense trophic activity, 
and with the rapid metabolism of every tissue, with education 
of function of special sense organs and their brain centers." 

The character of the nervous diseases which follow this short 
transitional period in most cases differs very greatly from that 
of the diseases preceding it. We have now, says Clouston (11), 
the period when muscular motion becomes co-ordinated fully 
with emotion, as seen specially in facial expression; and the 
nervous diseases which characterize the years from eight or nine 



28 NASCENT STAGES. 

to thirteen or fourteen are chorea, some cases of epilepsy and 
somnambulism, megrim, asthma, and some eye defects. 

In this transitional period, at about eight years of age, there 
are as many striking indications of physical disturbance and 
readjustment as are found in the pubescent period with which 
all are acquainted, and about which so much has been written 
and spoken. I think there can be no doubt that if the period 
at eight carried with it any objective sign of the birth of a func- 
tion so deep-seated and universal as is the sex function, it would 
not have been so long in receiving the attention due it. For in 
other ways the changes which occur at about eight are even 
more striking than those that occur at about thirteen. 

As was said in the introduction of this topic, the life at this 
time is both retrospective and prophetic. We have both the traces 
of the stage preceding it and suggestions of the stage following. 
Part of the child's teeth are temporary and part of them are per- 
manent; the child's brain, although it has approximated its 
growth in size, and is turning toward development of function, 
nevertheless continues to grow at a slow rate, and functions often 
inaccurately and with difficult3\ The vascular system is as it 
was, while the muscular system has taken a sudden leap ahead, 
and the disproportion in the development of these two systems 
at this time results in cardiac incompetence and fatigue. 

The somatic and nervous diseases are about evenly divided 
between those characteristic of the stage preceding and the one 
following. 

There seems to be no abrupt change in the development of 
the senses at this time, and yet the period is significant, inas- 
much as those who lose their sense of sight before this time are 
apt not to have visual images and those who lose their sense 
of hearing before this time are not apt to have auditory images. 

This then is a time of readjustment in the vascular, muscular 
and nervous systems, and of great disturbance in the functions 
of circulation, digestion and nutrition. Coming at about the 
age of eight, when the child is apt to be in his third or fourth 
year of school, these facts are fraught with great pedagogical 
significance. It seems evident that the child is not capable 
of the same amount of physical and mental activity and endur- 
ance as he was at six or seven or as he will be at nine or 
ten, and this fact in itself would demand on the one hand a 
decrease in the amount of work required and on the other hand 
the provision of ample opportunities for pleasant recreation and 
amusement and quiet rest. 

Dr. Jackson (4) says, referring to the disorders incidental to 
the second dentition, "The remedies which I have found most 
useful are as follows: — First, a relief from study or from regular 
tasks, yet using books so far as they afford agreeable occupation 



NASCENT STAGES. 29 

and amusement. Second, exercise in the open air, preferring 
the mode most agreeable to the patient and in more grave cases 
the removal from the town to the country." 

V. 

Youth. 

Although no two records on the growth of children coincide 
throughout, there seems to be in a general way agreement that 
at about eight or nine years of age there is a sudden increase 
followed by a slight decrease in annual increment until the time 
just preceding puberty. So far as is known there is nothing 
peculiar in the development of the nervous system at this time. 
There seems to be a steady development of its functioning 
power and a very slight increase in the weight of the brain. 
These 5'ears of slow growth from about nine to twelve or thir- 
teen years mark a third definite stage in the development of the 
child. Both the physical and psychical life are unique and de- 
mand a unique pedagogy. The child is not simply his former 
self grown larger but he is in many ways an altogether differ- 
ent being. The transitional period from seven to nine has 
served to transform him not only nominall}^ but actually from 
the stage of childhood to that of youth. 

The chances for life are better now than they have been here- 
tofore, the girls being least susceptible to disease at 11 (3.23 
per 1000) and the boys at 12. (3.42 per loco. ) (17.) The 
somatic diseases to which the child is liable, while not peculiar 
to this stage, are almost entirely diflferent from those of the stage 
preceding this; while the nervous diseases to which he is most 
liable are to a high degree peculiar to this stage. The heart 
muscle has increased in size proportionately to the size of the 
body and so fatigue is less easily induced than at the age of 
eight. " Sensation, special and common, and its organs have 
been developed; muscular co-ordination has progressed far; 
and many of the mental faculties, such as memory, fancy 
and emotion, have all acquired some strength, but muscular 
action has not been fully co-ordinated with feeling, and 
this is the period of life when this co-ordination takes 
place." (11.) This is the period of endurance and of co-or- 
dination mental and physical, and mental with physical; the 
time for the storing up of reserve power and the establishment 
of automatisms — the essential forerunners of the reproductive 
function. It is the intermediate stage of life between the stages 
of greatest brain growth and of highest functional advance; be- 
tween the pure gathering in of egoism and the appearance of 
the higher altruism. Above all things else this is the "laying 
up," the " salting down " stage of child life. ... As be- 



30 NASCENT STAGES. 

fore, let us consider this stage from the three-fold standpoint 
of play, work and conduct. 

Play. In regard to the child's play at this time the princi- 
ples recognized in the earlier stage should not be lost sight of 
here. It should be unhampered, spontaneous and careless of 
ends. But there are other elements entering now that were not 
present before. This is the time when the transition is made 
from the purely individual games and plays to the full fledged 
co-operative games. Every nine-year-old boy has his nine and 
eleven or belongs to the teams of some other boy. From the 
immediate artistic standpoint all such co-operative play is a fail- 
ure, but its mental and physical significance to those who par- 
ticipate can hardly be gainsaid. At first the captain of a team 
will hardly be able to hold his men together long enough for a 
single game; a bruised finger, a bad start, an imaginary slight 
sustained by a prominent member of a team, and a multitude 
of equally trifling matters play havoc with the captain's organ- 
izing genius. 

These things are not so true of the twelve-year-old team. 
Three years have served to work a transformation. Now teams 
are organized that remain intact all season — and so almost 
every town has its " North Enders," " South Enders," " West 
Siders ' ' and ' ' East Siders. ' ' Whereas the nine-year-olds hardly 
knew the "outs from the "ins," the twelve-year-olds know 
the game as well as the most inveterate "rooter." Further- 
more they have attained the muscular strength and co-ordina- 
tion to execute it. Hand in hand with this development of 
muscular strength and control have gone mental strength and 
control. So that the team hangs together after a half dozen 
crushing defeats. They do not disband because the pitcher has 
an off day or because the center rush fumbles. They have 
learned that to have one's own way absolutely in play means to 
play alone, and that team work means self-control in the high- 
est sense. Aside from health, which should be the chief con- 
sideration, the great gains to be derived from play at this time 
are to be seen in the increased mental and physical control 
developed in co-operative games and plays. Along with this 
control and subjection of one's whims and caprices for the sake 
of the group there must be found the same spontaneity and free- 
dom as characterized the stage up to seven. The chief differ- 
ence lay in this, that whereas in the earlier stage the plea was 
made for the absolute freedom and spontaneity of the individual, 
here we must insist upon the .same degree of freedom and spon- 
taneity on the part of the group. There the individual quit 
playing with its doll and began playing with its toes at will. 
Here the group quits playing ball and begins playing war at 
will. There the child exercised the initiative in every particu- 



NASCENT STAGES. 3 1 

lar Here the group exercises this prerogative. There must 
in the latter as m the former case, be absolute freedom froni 
external control. Better that a team should disband a dozen 
times a day than that it should be organized by the captain's 
lather and sustamed through paternal compulsion. On the 
other hand, one of the things that every child must learn sooner 
or later is that if he is to live in society there are some thin erg 
he may do and many things he may not do. One of the hardest 
lessons that a boy has to learn who moves from the country 
into the city is that he cannot throw stones in every direction 
:i'f '^?l-^^7 ^""'^ ^'™ ^° reconcile himself to the proposition 
tnat all his throwing must be straight up. But that is the price 
one must pay for social life. There is no place where this les- 
son can be taught so naturally and brought home to the child 
so forcibly and in a way that it will be accepted so readily as in 
!l^ 0^° co-operative games and plays. Thus unconsciously to 
the child and entirely incidentally has come to him one of the 
most essential and fundamental lessons of social life. 

Co7iduct. In the following discussion of work for this stac^e 
and of conduct for the previous stage, most things that b?ar 
upftn conduct at this time are given. All of the principles sug- 
gested for the earlier stage should be observed here But it 
must not be forgotten that the child's notion of right and wrong 
has ^^v&Xo^^^ pari passu with his physical and mental develoo- 
ment. He should, therefore, be held responsible for his conduct 
m a way that heretofore would have been unjust. Insight and 
rational sympathy on the part of the teacher and parent are 
of the greatest importance. Judicious but close discipline should 
be exercised. While the fundamentals for work as sucro-gsted 
below are being drilled into the child at this time, it^i^ just 
as necessary that the fundamentals in conduct should not be 
slighted. No task should be set that is too difficult for the 
child to perform, and no performance should be accepted that 
is not well done. Irremediable injury will come to the child who 
is allowed to roughly approximate a standard in work and con- 
duct. Fairness should always characterize any requirement in 
conduct, and the child should be expected to fulfill this require- 
ment^ promptly, fully and unequivocally. These are the years 
for discipline in conduct as well as in work. 

Work. The stage from nine to thirteen differs from the one 
up to seven in that the earlier was pre-eminently the play stage 
while the later should be pre-eminently a work stage. It was 
found that before seven the child is not apt to have developed 
mental and physical control sufficient to enable him to produce 
effectively and that he is apt to be injured by trying to do so. 
After the transitional period, at about eight, the average child 
is found to possess sufficient strength and control in both these 



32 NASCENT STAGES. 

lines to produce effectively in various ways without endanger- 
ing his health or development. It must never be lost sight of 
that an injudicious amount of work is to be avoided at all 
times. 

This, then, is the time when the child should be initiated 
into hard work. It is a time, also, when his tissues, muscular 
and neural, are plastic and when he is largely exempt from 
disease. It is the time for drill, for practice, for discipline and 
even for drudgery. This is in no way contradictor}^ to the 
doctrine of spontaneity advocated in the preceding period. 
The conditions of life that I have just enumerated show that 
the child does not now run the risk of arrested development 
that he has heretofore and there is one very important chapter 
of psychology that is too little considered in the discussions of 
the spontaneity and natural interest of the child. This is the 
dependence of interest upon attention. The emphasis is almost 
always placed upon the obverse proposition that children attend 
to whatever they have an interest in, but it is just as true that 
they are apt to become interested in whatever they attend to. 
Owing to the conditions of development, I should say for the 
stage up to seven, for most part let them attend to those things 
which attract them without assistance and for this stage let 
them attend to those things which serve as the alphabets of 
formal school work even though at times their interest in some 
lines must be induced by attention to them. 

Many lines of work which the child was capable of pursuing 
only incidentally in the previous stage should now be taken up 
in earnest, while the things he has been doing he should in a 
degree continue to do. 

Nature Stud}^ should not be supplanted by arithmetic, and 
the story will still have its place in the curriculum, but there 
will be readjustment of work so that the course will be strength- 
ened by the addition of subjects. Reading should now be made 
one of the daily assigned tasks. The average child by this time 
possesses the mental and physical strength and control which 
will enable it to use the instruments of reading as a source of 
enjoyment and information without endangering its health and 
robbing it of time that could be much more profitabl)' used in 
other ways. The child of nine or ten will not consume all its 
energy in holding the book open, keeping the place, and inter- 
preting the thought. The end to be attained should be facility 
rather than ability to pronounce polysyllables. To this end there 
should be a well selected list of books treating of all subjects of 
human and especially of childish interest accessible to the child, 
and he should have perfect freedom in the selection of his reading 
material. A great amount of oral reading should be encouraged. 
Facility to catch the thought and to express it intelligently 



NASCENT STAGES. 33 

must be sought. The aim should not be to develop critics but 
to master the subject as a tool; to become proficient in the use 
of it as a joiner is in the use of his chisel. It need hardly be said 
that the child's opportunity for such drill is not limited to his 
reading and story books, but that every book he uses, regard- 
less of subject matter, serves equally as well. If the time given 
to reading before the child is seven years old were given to real 
things in which he has a lively interest, as was suggested in the 
discussion of work for that stage, it would bring such a fund of 
information and interest to its reading work at nine years of 
age that the problem of method in teaching reading would prac- 
tically solve itself. It has been demonstrated over and over 
again that the way for an adult to get a working mastery of a 
language is to become absorbingly interested in the subject 
written in that language. And so it is with the child. If he 
can arrive at this stage with a first-hand knowledge of and inter- 
est in rivers and hills, flowers and trees, birds and bugs, ani- 
mals and people of all sorts, reading will be a key whose use he 
will not be long in learning. Arithmetic should also cease to be 
onl)'^ an incidental study and should become one of the regular 
studies of the programme. The child now possesses a fair degree 
of brain functioning power, and the ability to direct its attention 
and to carry on, in a simple way at least, the processes of abstrac- 
tion, association and generalization. It also has physical develop- 
ment sufiicient to use the materials of arithmetic to some pur- 
pose and without injury to itself The aim at this time in 
arithmetic should be a mastery of the fundamentals; the estab- 
lishment of the alphabets of arithmetic. For two reasons this 
should be done. There will never be a time when the child can 
do this kind of work better than he can now; and advance in the 
subject is absolutely hopeless without it. The child must learn 
to read and write numbers, whole numbers, fractions, decimals 
and denominate numbers. He must learn the addition and 
multiplication table until, shuffle it however you will, it will be 
as familiar to him as his own name. He must become thor- 
oughly at home in the tables of denominate numbers. No effort 
should be made to put the child through the book or to make 
a mathematician of him. He should not be held so much for 
his method as for his work. He should not be held for the logic 
of his work but for the performance of it. He is not necessarily 
ignorant of his work because he cannot explain it. The aim in 
arithmetic at this stage should be drill upon the fundamentals 
until the child uses them with as much ease as he feeds himself. 
The foreign languages should be taken up at this time. Indeed, 
if the child is .so fortunately situated as to hear these languages, 
or if skillful teachers can be secured, they may be taken up much 
earlier. (See p, 370.) But under no conditions should they be 



f .r. 



34 NASCENT STAGES. 

allowed to be deferred to a later time than this. Observation 
and testimon}^ both show that seldom is a person who begins 
the study of a foreign language at a later stage entirely free 
from the accent peculiar to his own language and in every way 
as proficient as a native born. This is the time when children 
manufacture language; when they speak the so-called "pig 
latin;" when they distort their words and sentences; when they 
communicate in abbreviations; when they use secret language; 
when they begin to talk by gestures and use the deaf and dumb 
alphabet. It is the ripe time for the grafting on of new modes 
of expression. Furthermore, the wisest and most successful 
teachers of foreign languages advocate its study at this time, 
and some of them even earlier. As in the use of the reading 
and arithmetic book, so here the child is able to use the 
materials necessary for such study. The thing to be aimed at 
is facility. The conversational method should be insisted upon. 
Whoever cannot teach by this method should be considered 
unfit for the modern languages as one who does not know the 
multiplication table without the book is unfit to teach arith- 
metic. Correct forms should be insisted upon from the start. 
This end will not be attained so much through a grind upon 
technical grammar as by reading and hearing good forms and 
exercise in the use of them. 

The ideal for the foreign languages at this time will be much 
as the ideal for the mother tongue was in the earlier stage and 
indeed as it is for most part in this stage. Saturation in good 
forms both oral and zvritten with perfect freedom of expression. 

The work in Nature Study will serve as the most natural 
introduction to the more formal study of geography. The 
child's interest in his natural environment will be extended 
to an interest in nature in general. Through his knowledge 
of and interest in the plants and animals of his own region he 
can easily be led into a study of the fauna and flora of different 
countries, and this will in its turn serve as an excellent intro- 
duction to the study of biology a little later. In the same way 
an interest in the mineral world will bring him naturally to the 
study of geology. The child knows that many things that he 
consumes in the way of food and clothing are not produced at 
home and he also knows from his previous work in Nature 
Study that these things have their origin in plants and animals. 
Here is an additional incentive to study the plants and animals 
of different regions but it serves its highest end as an introduc- 
tion to the study of the two great geographical topics of com- 
merce and manufacture. No more dreary task was ever as- 
signed a child than the one of committing to memory outright 
all the agricultural and manufactured products of the different 
States in Asia or the imports and exports of Australia. And 



NASCSNT STAGES. 35 

no more valuable or absorbingly interesting piece of work can 
be undertaken than the tracing out of the processes that resulted 
in the shoes or the hat that he wears or the salt and pepper that he 
eats. Instead of getting a few isolated facts which are dismissed 
after the recitation for others just as valueless, the child would 
thus get things in their relations and the phases of original 
production, transportation and manufacture would signify some- 
thing to him. Without any attempt at philosophizing, a thing 
to be studiously avoided at this time, a question which always 
arises in the mind of the child is, — "Why don't they raise 
pepper and cotton in New England ? " " Why is the meat that 
I eat carried from the Mississippi Valley ? " " How is it that 
the people in the plains and their neighbors on the mountain 
side producesuch widely different things?" "Why is Vancouver 
so much warmer than Labrador ? " It need hardly be said that 
such questions show that the time is ripe for the study of 
climatic conditions — the significance of altitude, latitude, ocean 
currents, relief, contour, movements of the earth, the change 
of seasons, and all the geographical conditions which make 
the products of one region differ so widely from those of an- 
other. The study of the relief of a country, its climate, etc., 
paves the way to a study of the geographical basis for the 
history work. Children at this age can be led to see and have 
great interest in seeing why, for example, Illinois does not ex- 
tend a little farther west, Indiana a little farther south and 
Massachusetts a little farther east; that ancient Greece was not 
divided into more than twenty States through mere resolutions, 
and why modern Switzerland is divided up into twenty-six 
cantons. 

It must be admitted that these suggestions do not at all times 
run parallel to the logic of the subject, but it must also be ad- 
mitted that they do run parallel to good pedagogy and we care 
more for pedagogy than we do for a smooth running piece of 
logical machinery. The chief reason that geography has been 
a bore to students and a burden to teachers and a grief to 
pedagogues is, that we have been trying to organize it and 
present it logically, beginning with mathemathical, in which 
the child can possibly have no interest, and going from this 
through physical to political. If the wits of the pedagogic 
and scientific world were summoned to devise a more unprom- 
ising and fruitless scheme for geography work than the one 
of following out the logic of the subject, their work would 
surely result in unequivocal failure. 

In the same way the history stories and the myth of the 
earlier stage bring the child naturally to the more careful and 
detailed study of history. The work at this time should be 
full of human interest. The time has not yet come for the more 



36 NASCENT STAGES. 

abstract study of treaties, constitutions and government docu- 
ments. In the stud}'^ of American history, the beginnings of 
our history appeal very strongly to children of this age. Well 
written stories of the voyages of Columbus; of the expeditions 
of Drake and DeSoto; of the work of La Salle and Marquette; 
of the landing of the Pilgrims; of the founding of Jamestown 
and St. Augustine; the winning of the West; the stories of 
David Crockett, Daniel Boone, and George Rogers Clark have 
a very great fascination for the child at this age and will be 
retained with remarkable tenacity. This is the "blood and 
thunder" age of the child. He will follow out in detail the 
manoeuvers of an army, the rough plan of a campaign, the re- 
sults of battles with more delight and often with more accuracy 
than he will at a later stage. One reason why so much of the 
time given to wars by older students instead of to interpretation 
and historical documents on the ground that there is no time 
for the latter is, that the former were not taught when they 
should have been taught. Any normal child who has had ra- 
tional training up to the age of ten will read the battles of the 
American Revolution from lycxington and Concord to Yorktown 
with approximately as much understanding and infinitely more 
pleasure and enthusiasm than he will at twenty. Only let the 
history be authentic and written decently, and do not piece- 
meal it but let it be read, a whole campaign or a whole war at 
a time. No wonder a child loses interest and enthusiasm when 
the lesson closes in the middle of a retreat and the child is pun- 
ished for reading beyond the prescribed limits of the assignment. 
Biography should constitute a large part of the history course 
at this time. The strong interest in human life and activity so 
characteristic of the earlier stage has not waned. A majority 
of our children come from the public schools after three or four 
years spent in the study of some text-book history without any 
very definite idea of any of it. If we would but take advantage 
of their normal interests and introduce them to the lives of the 
men and women who have made history, the results obtained 
would be more in proportion to the time and energy spent. It 
would be unwise perhaps to advocate biography exclusively 
for this stage but I have no doubt that if the average ten-year- 
old child could have access to the biographies of twenty of the 
most influential citizens of our country, representative of dif- 
ferent times and movements, his real knowledge of our history 
would be as far in excess of what it usually is as a mountain 
exceeds a mole hill. In the life of Washington alone he would 
be introduced to colonial government, the French and Indian 
war, attempts at union, the colonial and continental congress, 
the various grievances of the colonies, the declaration of inde- 
pendence, government under the articles of confederation, the 



NASCENT STAGES. 37 

revolutionary war, the adoption of the constitution, the birth 
of the government, the division of the people into parties, etc., 
etc. The aim must be to present the work in a connected form. 
It will be time enough to cross section it and bring together 
everything that happened everywhere in a given year after the 
children have the longitudinal lines laid. We must have the 
historical warp before we try to put in the historical woof. 

Manual work adapted to the development of the child should 
constitute a regular part of the programme during this stage. 
Just what this work should be, external circumstances and the 
interest and ability of the child must determine, but in most 
cases drawing, carving and similar exercises requiring not too 
fine an adjustment of the muscles are desirable. And this is 
above all things the time for practice and drill in those lines of 
muscular activity that are to become habitual. The child who 
is to become an expert pianist, or violinist for example, should 
devote these years to laborious drill upon these instruments. 
Work in voice culture should be begun at this time, although 
judicious care needs to be exercised later when the voice is 
"\:hanging " to prevent permanent injury. The one who is to 
have complete mastery of his body, of the physical movements, 
must not neglect the work in physical culture. There is no 
time in one's life when it is so true that "as you live now will 
determine how you will always live," as this time. 

I have in the pedagogical discussions studiously avoided 
dogmatism. It would argue a lack of comprehension of the 
entire subject to say that at a given time such and such parts 
of such and such subjects and nothing else should be given. I 
have merely tried to show that many things the schools are try- 
ing to do at certain times are out of place and have tried to 
show what would be better. I have, therefore, in displacing 
some of the standard studies (reading, arithmetic, etc.,) 
before seven years of age suggested some lines of work that 
are suitable for this time without drawing a line between the 
things that must and the things that must not be done. Indeed 
I should be surprised if there are not many things unnoticed 
in that discussion that should have a place in the curriculum. 
The purpose was simply to work out the principle and illustrate 
rather fully. And so, in the discussion of work for this stage 
from nine to twelve or thirteen, it cannot be said what are all 
the things that may be done and all that may not. But I have 
taken up the subjects that were discarded in the previous stage 
and have tried to show that they should now have quite a 
prominent place in the curriculum, and have made suggestions 
as to the nature of all the work for the entire period without 
any attempt to go into details. The results of my observations 
and studies have led me to this conclusion in regard to the work 



38 NASCENT STAGES. 

for the two stages ending at seven or eight and twelve or thir- 
teen respectively, that the work in the earlier stage as a rule is 
too heavy and that too much is expected of the child; and that 
the work of the later stage is too light and too little required 
of the child. I wish in conclusion to emphasize the fact 
that many of the fundamentals in training of all kinds can 
be gotten only through service, through long continued ap- 
plication and that there is no time in the life of the individual 
so well suited from the standpoints of mental capital and de- 
velopment, and physical capital and development to drill work 
as the years just preceding the dawn of adolescence. 

I desire to express, here, my thanks to President G. Stanley 
Hall and Dr. William H. Burnham for valuable suggestions 
and criticisms, and to Mr. I^ouis N. Wilson, lyibrarian of Clark 
University, for his cordiality and help in securing literature 
upon the subject. 

No attempt has been made in this paper to treat the adoles- 
cent period. For this the reader is referred to President G. 
Stanley Hall's forthcoming work on the subject. 

Authorities Cited. 

I. Baldwin, J. Mark. Mental development in the child and the 
race. The Macniillau Co., New York, 1895. pp. 496. 

2. . Social and ethical interpretations in mental develop- 
ment. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1S97. pp. 574. 

3. Barnes, Earl. Studies in education. A series of ten numbers 

devoted to child study and the history of education. Stanford 
University, Cal., 1896-97. pp. 400. 

4. Browne, J. Crichton. Education and the nervous system. Mor- 

ris : Book of Health. Cassell and Co., New York, 1884. pp. 
269-380. 

5. Bryan, William L. On the development of voluntary motor 

ability. Am. Jour, of Psy., Nov. 1892, Vol. V, pp. 125-204. 

6. Burk, Frederic Teasing and Bullying. Ped. Sent., Apr., 1897, 

Vol. IV, pp. 336-371- 
7. . Growth of children in height and weight. Ant. Jour. 

of Psy., Apr., 1898, Vol. IX, pp. 253-326. (Bibliography, pp. 

315-326.) 
8. . From fundamental to accessor}'^ in the development of 

the nervous system and of movements. Ped. Sent., Oct., 1898. 
8a. Chamberlain, Alexander, F. The Child : A Study in the 

Evolution of Man. (Contemporary Science Series.) Charles 

Scribner's Sons, N. Y., 1900. See especially Chap. IV, The 

Periods of Childhood, pp, 51-105. 
9. Christopher, W. S. Significance of infancy in human being. 

Trans. 111. Soc. for Child Study (1897), Vol. II, No. 2, pp. 109- 

114. 
10. . Three crises in child life. Child Study Monthly, Dec, 

1897 Vol. Ill, pp. 324-335. 



NASCENT STAGES. 

12 f- '-'"^eraii'^ Boyd, Edinburgh, 1891. pp.138 

Edinburtrh 1884 ) "opl«-) Edinburgh Health Society, 

';■ yS!-,at,sS^\^^)^:^^, - the Boston 

■ ^"-S, S'-^o^i fsr?'","' ''>'1"'°S^- He'^HoIt'and 
course^ ,6 ' ' ' " ™'=- PP' <^85' 7°4. See also Briefer 

™'d^r''Se?irt h,','" °" °°';°'f"' KorpergrSsse des Mensehen von 
wLen ,?„d ? T j5- Lebeosjahre uebst Erlauternngen Uber 

S"irie"°S?h'nrn';d'lrS-n'^s^5S:l;:;"'"T °/'lT'"^ '^ 
Mitnchen, ,8,6. pp.38. ( Wi^S twr^e^urin^'chartf l""""' 

~^ ■ ^ P°i°t of difference between race and individual np 
cfe'ty^T8T6.- p.lr."^ "'^^ '°°^ °' ^^^ National nlrbart So"- 

^°S^/^''? a"*^; Psychic processes and muscular exercise Decen 
mal Celebratio7i of Clark University, 1899. (Published bv Hi ^' 
University, Worcester, Mass.) pp. 383-395. ^ ^^^ 

27. Perez, Bernard. The'iirst three years of childhood Ed and 

SuTlv \ w'L^d '^'^'- '''^^^ "^ introduction by^James 
toully. C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., 1889. pp 294 

28. PREYer W Mental development in the child. Translated by 

H^W. Brown. D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1893 pp^ 

''• ^Ton.^L^t^sX'''"""'^^"'"'^^^^^^^^ ^- 

30. Roberts Ch.^ri,es. A manual of anthropometry, or a euide to 
an^d ";'' ri exam nation and measuremLt of tfcSumIn body 
J. and A. Churchill, London, 1878. pp. 54. -^ 



22. 
23- 

24. 
25- 

26. 



40 NASCENT STAGES. 

31. Ross, James. Handbook of the diseases of the nervous system. 

J. and A. Churchill, London, 1885. pp. 723. 

32. Sheldon, Henry D. Institutional activities of American chil- 

dren. Am. Jour, of Psy., July, 1898, Vol. IX, pp. 425-448. 

33. Shinn, MiLiCENT W. Notes on the development of a child. Univ. 

of California Studies. Published by the University, Berkeley, 
Cal., 1893 and 1899. pp. 424. 

34. SmalIv, Maurice H. The suggestibility of children. Ped. Sent., 

Dec, 1896, Vol. IV, pp. 176-220. 

35. Spalding, Douglas A. Instinct. With original observations on 

young animals. Macmillan's Magazine, Feb., 1873, Vol. XXVII, 
pp. 282-293. 

36. Taylor, J. Madison. The causes of mental impairment in chil- 

dren. A. M. S. Bulletin, July 15, 1895. 

37. ViERORDT, H, Das Massenwachsthum der Korperorgane des 

Menschen. Arch. f. Anatomie und Physiologic, 1890. (Sup- 
plement volume.) pp. 62-94. 



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